Sydney Symphony Orchestra

September 5 would have been the Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury's 57th birthday.

So there was a nice poignancy as the Sydney Symphony and Sydney Philharmonia Choir pounded out the anthem Who Wants to Live Forever?, which formed the basis of the closing movement of Tolga Kashif's The Queen Symphony.

The symphony was commissioned by EMI Classics and was premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London earlier this year, in the presence of the surviving band members and Jer Bulsara, Freddie Mercury's mother. It was an instant hit and has been selling like hotcakes ever since. But the interesting thing about this work is that it is by no means a Hooked on Classics rewrite.

Kashif has explored the vast opus of Queen's 30-year history and used it as source material for his own creation. That it ends up celebrating the band and the memory of Mercury seems almost coincidental.

The work opens in good symphonic style with a low rumbling in the strings, misterioso, which builds up to a powerful choral episode playing with the refrain from Radio Ga Ga.

It sounds weird, and it is a little weird to hear the Sydney Philharmonia singing a phrase so firmly embedded in a whole generation's subconscious, in such an alien context. But in some ways, the more remote and tangential Kashif's use of Queen songs is, the more the music intrigues.

His fairly literal transcription of Bohemian Rhapsody in the fifth movement transforms the crazy, epic masterpiece into a sadly jaunty march.

Bicycle, on the other hand, undergoes the full deconstruction, its rhythmic complexities becoming the basis for a frenzied orchestral fugue which left some audience members, obviously Queen fans, feeling a bit bemused.

They must have forgiven Kashif by the end. Subtitled Homage, the last movement revisited some of the band's greatest anthems, giving them the full symphonic treatment.

No doubt, Mercury would have loved to hear We are the Champions with choir and 100-piece orchestra.

He would have loved the pounding opening to We Will Rock You played by four orchestral percussionists.

I hope he would have appreciated Kashif's eloquent refashioning of Who Wants to Live Forever? into an elegaic duet, beautifully played by Kirsten Williams (violin) and Catherine Hewgill (cello).

Kashif is quite clearly a superb musician: he can, and does, turn his hand to conducting, composing, recording and producing, in commercial and classical fields. As a conductor he is impressive, leading the orchestra through an irresistibly spirited performance of Bernstein's Symphonic Dances.

As a composer, Kashif uses orchestral colour and deftly interwoven rhythms to great effect. If The Queen Symphony errs on the side of bombast at times, it is probably only natural, considering its source material.

By his own admission, Kashif doesn't see music in terms of genres pop, jazz, classical but in terms of quality, good or bad. The music in this concert would have to be classified as good, some of it very good, indeed.